Soliloquy
by Emmy Award
Summary: Connor goes to Rome. Set post "Origin". ConnorFaith.


Written for Dana's Het-Only Connor Ficathon.

Spoilers: All seven seasons of Buffy, Angel thru 5.18 Origin.

Rating: I guess it's PG-13. I always say that if you watch the show, you can read it.

Summary: Connor goes to Rome. Connor/Faith

Author's Notes: Okay, this turned out a little different to the way I planned it, and I'm not entirely sure that I've fulfilled the challenge requirements. I went off on this tangent that I never meant to go off on. I've set this after "Origin" as for the majority of the writing of this fic, I hadn't seen it, though I had been spoiled for it. I also took a liberty in assuming that Faith had her memories of Connor restored. Oh, and if the very little Italian I have used herein is spelled wrongly, I apologise. I haven't learnt Italian since year eight.

Disclaimer: Nothing belongs to me. Nothing. I am not Joss. I am not Shakespeare. I am not George Harrison. I am not Rodgers and Hammerstein. I am (thankfully) not Guy Sebastian. I am not the pervy Italian boys' soccer team. I am, however, part of "the Australian girls' choir", though I am not mentioned and I do not own it.

On with the fic! Requirements at the end.

--

**Soliloquy **

--

_To be or not to be: that is the question: _- from Hamlet

_Everything that I am, everything that I have done, has led me here._ – Angelus, Becoming Part One.

_You think you know … what's to come…what you are. You haven't even begun._ – The First Slayer, Restless

_Anyway... I just wanted to say good-bye. I gotta go back to my life now._ – Connor, Origin.

--

When he left Wolfram and Hart that day, the day that (clichéd as it sounds) changed his life, the brand-new memories that were really his old memories were fuzzy. Unreal. It was like they weren't his at all and he thought he'd be okay.

Now, waking up sweating and breathless after a nightmare that trembles his very foundations because he knows it's _true_, he realises that he may have overestimated himself.

After he saw Angel he went back to school, expecting to go to class, avoid Tracey's phone calls and party. Simplicity at its best. He was going to deal with the whole memory thing over the summer.

But, you know. Best laid plans and all that. He's pretty sure Angel or Wesley could tell him all about those. Yeah.

He remembers all that now.

The nightmares started a week after he got back to school. The flashes had started three days before that, but they're okay. Disconcerting, but okay. Like yesterday, when he found Tracey's hairbrush under his bed, and then had a flash of brushing Cordy's hair one day. Or last Monday, when he had a bologna sandwich and remembered Fred making one for him because she knew they were his favourite. It's kind of nice to remember that stuff, but the nightmares almost kill him.

He sits up in his bed and sips at the glass of water on the bedside table. It's almost light out, and normally you wouldn't be able to drag him out of bed at this time if your life depended on it, but today, after nightmares of raining fire and zombie lawyers, there is no way Connor Reilly (Angel?) is going back to sleep.

He goes for a run instead, and while he's running towards the fiery gold and pink of the sunrise, feet pounding on the pavement, he makes a decision.

He's going to go to Europe. Backpack round. He's always wanted to see Europe.

He needs to get away. Get lost.

He needs to figure out who the hell he actually is.

--

His mom's kind of hurt, his dad's supportive and his sister's torn between being annoyed that he won't be home and being jealous because he's going to Europe. He's missing the family exodus to their cabin, and he's never done that before (in this life), so he feels kind of guilty, but fuck, he needs to get away.

He's going to backpack. It astounds him that he's left this dimension but he's never actually been out of the US. Unless, of course, you count Canada, which he doesn't.

Back when he was in Quor-toth, Holtz used to tell him stories. There isn't much he remembers from Quor-toth, something he's grateful for, but he remembers Holtz's stories. They were one of the only things he had to look forward to in those years. Sometimes Holtz told him about his family. Most of the time he talked about Angelus. Others, he gave him history lessons.

The stories Connor liked the most were about cities. He loved hearing about the old European cities, because they were so foreign to him; Quor-toth had many things, but cities weren't one of them. Holtz, in his day, had travelled all over Europe, and he told Connor about all of them: London, Marseilles, Budapest, Berlin, Moscow, Munich, Dublin, Vienna, Prague, Florence, Rome. Rome was always his favourite. Connor listened in rapture, and stored the words carefully away in his mind, like one would a precious gem. Beauty was hard to come by in Quor-toth, and these cities were the exception.

Of course, when he first saw Los Angeles, he gave up on cities forever.

He's learnt about these cities in school too, nearly fallen asleep on numerous occasions studying the average yearly rainfall in Athens and listening to teachers talk about 'the infrastructure' and the 'technological advancements of the Minoans and the Romans.' Like anyone cared about infrastructure when they could see the Coliseum or the Parthenon.

He shifts in his small and boxy airplane seat, and realises that they're about to start descent. The seatbelt light flashes on, and he buckles up, feeling a shiver of anticipation run through him.

The descent seems to last hours. In reality, it's minutes, and when the plane finally touches down on the runway, Connor thinks that ever since he listened to Holtz tell him all about _Roma_ all those years ago in Quor-toth, he's been waiting for this moment.

As he steps out of the airplane and down the tunnel towards the Rome Fiumicino Airport, he thinks that this is where it begins.

---

He hasn't been in Rome two days when he gets jumped by a gang of vampires in a lonely piazza. It's near midnight, so maybe he was asking for trouble, but still, he came here to get away from the madness, not meet it head-on at every corner. He suspects that the evil side of the force may have missed that memo, though, so he can hardly blame them.

He doesn't have a stake, and he curses himself for being stupid enough to go out at night without one. However, no amount of hindsight will make a stake magically appear in his hand, so he jumps into the fray without one. For a little bit, it feels natural, like he'd been doing it for years (which he had been) but after awhile, it becomes painfully clear that he's out of practice and out of his depth. He thinks it would be okay if he just had something to stake them with so they'd disappear instead of just getting back up again when he knocked them down, but then something slices through his side and all he can think of is pain and burning fire.

Freaking vampires.

So he's lying on the ground, bleeding in a piazza, and he wonders if this is it, if this is the moment where his luck runs out and he's dead. The vampire with the sword (who carries swords these days? Besides Angel, anyway) approaches him and he'd like to just leap up and cut his head off but, well, that's just not happening. Red flowers are blooming inside his vision and the vamp is coming closer and closer and he thinks how ironic it is to be killed by vamps when he was birthed by them and then the vampire explodes in a cloud of dust and there's a blonde standing over him, stake at the ready.

For a second he thinks it's Darla, but then he remembers that Darla is dead and that he's got a bleeding stab wound and holyfuckingmotherofgod it hurts and he doesn't actually care who this blonde is as long as she makes the burning stop.

'_Mi chiamo Buffy_. _Come ti chiami?'_ the blonde says, leaning over him. She's kind of agitated, but he doesn't dwell on it, because he can't think properly. His side is burning. 'Oh, crap, how do you say "hospital" in Italian?' Buffy shouts over her shoulder as she wads up her jacket and presses it against his side.

The reply of 'Huh?' is barely determinable over the fight going on around him, but still, Connor thinks he knows the voice. Maybe he doesn't. Sometimes the voices in his head blend and merge, and he can hardly tell who is real and who isn't.

'Okay, calm down,' Buffy is saying to herself. 'Le hospital? Il hospital? Il hospitale … oh God, I don't know …'

He finally gets up the energy to speak. 'No hospital,' he says, because hospitals mean explanations for things he's not entirely sure he understands properly in English, let alone Italian, and her face relaxes into relief.

'Oh, good, you're American. Really didn't need the language barrier there. What's your name?'

'Connor Reilly,' he manages to croak out. 'I'm okay. I don't need a hospital.'

'Connor, you've been stabbed,' she says worriedly, kind of stating the obvious, 'and I think you've lost a bit of blood.'

'I heal fast,' he tells her.

She looks doubtful.

'Look at it,' he insists, and looking at him sceptically, she does. A strange expression crosses her face.

'It needs bandaging,' she says, almost flatly, 'but other than that, you'll survive.' She looks at him suspiciously. 'What are you?'

He's saved from answering by Buffy's companion staking the last vampire and walking over to them. 'Connor,' she says, obviously surprised, and he realises that his memory hasn't been playing tricks on him and he does know that voice, because the owner of it is standing in front of him and it's Faith.

Of all people, he never thought he'd see _her _in Rome.

'Hi Faith,' he replies, and sits up, trying his best to ignore the slowly-decreasing yet still burning pain in his side. Faith nods in acknowledgement. Buffy glances between them with an expression somewhere between worry and wariness.

'So you two know each other,' she says, more than a little guarded.

'Yeah,' Faith replies. 'Though I haven't thought about you for a while, kid. Almost forgot about you.' Her brown eyes are probing even while her tone is flippant, and he can tell she means the memory wipe. He's surprised she remembers (and even more surprised she's acquainted with subtlety) but at the same time, glad she does.

'I'm an easy person to forget, it seems,' he replies, and no, that's not a little bitterness.

'Enough with the cryptic,' Buffy interjects, and he sees Faith grin. 'Connor, whatever you are, you need bandaging, and since you won't go to hospital you'll have to come to my place. Can you walk?'

He touches his side gingerly. 'I think so. If you guys help.'

'Good,' Buffy says. Faith is silent. He's not sure what that means.

---

Buffy's apartment is comfortable. It's not overly large, but it feels homey, with its soft couches and dim lamplight and organised clutter.

'Hold still,' Buffy's younger sister Dawn instructs as she disinfects his wound with something that stings a little more than he expected. He lets out a sharp hiss. 'Sorry,' she says apologetically. 'This stuff's nasty, I know.'

She carefully dabs it with ointment, and Connor wonders what Faith is telling Buffy about him in the other room. He's kind of freaked out, to tell the truth, because he's figured out that Buffy's a slayer, and he doesn't know what she'd do with the son of two vampires. He doesn't think Faith trusts him either, and he doesn't blame her, because if he'd woken up one day with a set of memories with him and minus him, he wouldn't trust him either.

Dawn is blissfully unaware of his inner turmoil (and he can't believe he just thought about his "inner turmoil" – how melodramatic), and is finishing bandaging his wound. 'There,' she says. 'All good. Just don't make any sudden movements or anything. I can guarantee it'll hurt.'

'I'll take your word for it,' he says, not wanting to move anyway. His wound is still stinging, and the ointment's really not helping. He's momentarily distracted by a cat wandering into the room and leaping onto the armchair opposite him. 'Nice cat.'

'His name's Quidditch,' the brunette girl says, picking up the ginger fluffball and cuddling him.

'You mean like in Harry Potter?' Connor asks incredulously, fixating on anything that isn't Faith or death by Slayer in order to take his mind off his gaping stab wound.

Dawn looks at him, amused. 'Is there something wrong with that?'

Connor's not sure what to say. On one hand, he's read the books, seen the movies, and he does in fact like them. On the other hand, he knew some fanatic Potterheads in high school and those guys scared the hell out of him.

'Don't laugh. B wanted to name him Muffin,' Faith says, grinning, from behind him. He somehow manages to sit up, and sees that she and Buffy have finished their impromptu conference. Since they're not trying to kill him or anything, he's taking this as a good sign.

Buffy rolls her eyes. 'That was a joke, Faith.'

Faith shrugs, and turns to Dawn. 'Hey, Dawn. Get outta here. We gotta talk to Connor about something.'

Dawn looks like she's going to make a protest, but Buffy gives her a look and she leaves quietly, taking Quidditch with her as Faith lounges in an armchair and Buffy perches on the coffee table.

'How's the wound?' Buffy asks. 'Dawn bandage it up okay?'

'Yeah,' he replies, feeling a little wary, because he's pretty sure he knows what she's doing, lulling him into a sense of false security and then pouncing, and he's seen way too many movies to fall for that trick. 'What do you want to know about me? Because I know you're curious about how fast I heal.'

'Not to mention the way you fight,' Buffy adds, and then gestures behind her. 'Faith said you were born a little different.' Her eyes are questioning.

'You could say that, yeah,' he replies, and internally sighs with relief.

Suddenly Buffy's whole demeanour relaxes, and she grins. 'Great,' she says. 'As long as you're not evil. I'm morally opposed to the evil here.'

He looks at her warily. 'That's it?'

Faith, lounging in her chair is watching the scene with dark lidded eyes. Buffy nods. 'Sure. You want to stay here tonight?'

He's a little confused, but hey. He can't walk properly. Whatever port in a storm. 'Okay. Thanks.'

Buffy smiles. 'It's okay. You want us to call anyone?' she asks, making a move to get up.

'No one to call,' he says easily, and it kind of saddens him to realise it's true.

---

The next day, Faith takes him back to his hostel. The wound is much improved and only stings slightly when he moves in the wrong direction.

'So you wanna tell me what's going on?' Faith asks, sitting on his small bunk.

'You mean with the whole memory thing?' he says bluntly, seeing no point whatsoever in beating around the bush.

Faith raises her eyebrows. 'Yeah,' she says, kind of dryly. 'That thing where I woke up one morning with two sets of memories. One with you, one without.'

He shrugs, because he's forgotten about his stab wound (still thinks he's invincible), and winces, before saying, 'Angel erased my life and put me into a new family, complete with new memories. That's why he's with Wolfram and Hart. A couple of months ago, Wesley went nuts and broke the spell. That's pretty much it.'

Faith looks taken aback, and he feels kind of triumphant. He didn't think he had the ability to get under her skin, and he's just gone and done it. 'Damn. Should've known there was a reason Angel was at that place.'

'Yeah,' he agrees awkwardly, because he's still not entirely sure what his thoughts on Angel are right now.

They sit there in a strained silence for a few seconds before Faith swings off his bunk and says, 'You up to a tour of Rome?'

'So you're the expert, huh?' he asks, grinning.

Faith smirks. 'Hey smartass, when you live in place for a while, you get to know it. You in or out?'

He can never resist a challenge from Faith, no matter how much his side is hurting. 'Sure.'

---

It's strange how it happens. It begins with the tour, in which they cruise Rome and eat gelatos, and continues when Faith invites Connor back to Buffy's place for dinner. It continues when, three days later, Connor goes with Faith on patrol and he has the best time kicking ass he thinks he's ever had, and it builds from there; patrol, dancing, sparring, eating, sparring, patrol, arguing, dancing, and suddenly he's in Faith's bedroom and she's looking at him with those eyes. Lust is not a strong enough word for what is in those eyes, and he is a red-blooded American male, despite his dubious parentage.

There is no way he is declining her invitation.

---

He quickly becomes a fixture in the comfortable apartment, like Quidditch and the dying pot plants. Buffy quietly ribs them about the noise they make, and Dawn is too busy packing to go to England that she doesn't care.

Not that he actually sees them much. He only really has time for Faith, and that time is usually spent in one of three ways: patrol, food and sex. Thought not necessarily in that order. He thinks his time spent on Faith, however, is time well spent. Faith has something about her that he just can't ignore or get his mind off. Maybe it was called charisma. Maybe it was called spunk. Maybe it was called leather.

Still it's odd, the way he begins to fall for Faith. Back when he first met her, he was too consumed with Cordelia to notice much at all, but he does remember that she pissed him off. Insisted on calling him 'kid'. Still does. He remembers sitting by her bedside during the Orpheus drug trip, and he remembers how she asked him if he was a murderer, because she was.

He wonders if it should bother him a little more that she is a murderer. He knows his parents would care.

Those Angelus days, well, they were strange days. Maybe these days, in their Roman sun and almost carefree timbre, are even stranger.

---

And now, he's been in Rome for a month and a half and he can't believe it's been that long. Everything he came here for seems so very far behind, like they were part of someone else's life. In a way, he guesses they were. All he can think of now is Faith, and her brown eyes and salty soft skin and acid tongue and just the overall sexiness of her.

Tonight, Connor has come to a realisation.

They're lying in Faith's bed, wrapped in a post-coital snuggle.

'I love you,' he says looking across at her, outwardly calm with his heart doing a pentathlon in his chest.

'Yeah?' she says, cocking an eyebrow and grinning. 'That's sweet kid.'

'I'm not a kid,' he replies, an echo of conversations past, but he's not defensive this time. She knows he's not a kid. 'And I'm not being sweet,' he continues. 'I mean it.'

He's looking at her hopefully, the stars of youth, despite everything, still dancing in his eyes.

She feels like she can't breathe.

He feels her stiffen in his arms. 'I gotta go,' she says, her voice kind of strangled, and she pulls herself out of the tangle of his arms and the sheets.

He watches her, bemused and bewildered, as she picks up her clothes and dresses frantically. 'Where are you going?'

She doesn't look at him. 'Out,' she replies shortly, and then she's gone, out of the bed, out the door, and she's pissed with him.

So he's pissed with her, because he doesn't know exactly why she's gone off in a snit, but he thinks it's because he loves her, which he can't help, and he's pissed with himself, because he just let her go and he should have realised that she'd freak like that, and god, he really does love her, and he thought she needed to know that.

He shoves the covers back and dresses quickly. He grabs a stake and storms out into the living room. He needs to find her, find out what the problem is, because he doesn't think he can stand losing her and the fact that that really scares him scares him more than anything else ever has.

'Whoa. Hold up, Connor.' It's Buffy. He stops. She's sitting cross-legged on the couch in sweats and a tank top, gently scratching behind Quidditch's ears. 'You and Faith have a fight?' she asks frankly.

'No,' he replies – it wasn't a fight exactly, and he doesn't have time for Buffy at this point in time. He goes for the door.

'Don't go after her right now,' Buffy says, and he turns around. 'It'll just be bad.' She looks hard at him, her green eyes shrewd.

'I told her I loved her,' he blurts out, and honestly, he has no idea why.

Her expression relaxes. 'Sit down,' she says simply. 'I think there's stuff you need to know about Faith.'

He'd sit down on the armchair, but Dawn's left a whole bunch of her junk there which hasn't been moved even though Dawn's been in England nearly a month now, so he sits next to Buffy on the couch. She's tiny, and she's folded herself into a corner, so sitting on the couch with Buffy is vastly different to lounging on the couch with Faith, who'd spread out just to piss him off.

He wishes she were here.

'Where'd she go?' he asks. 'Do you know?'

'Patrol, I think,' Buffy replies. 'She'll come back. She's just rattled. Intimacy scares her. Give her some space.'

It's like she's looking into his brain and answering all the questions he hasn't got around to asking yet. Buffy kind of baffles him, with her blonde hair and bubbly Californian vernacular and her sad green eyes. Truth be told, he hasn't spent that much time with her, despite the fact that he's been practically living in her apartment. Of course, he's spent most of that time with Faith, so it's hardly surprising.

Buffy looks at him carefully. 'Connor, why are you here?' she asks unexpectedly. 'I mean, most kids would come here to travel and stuff, but you haven't done much of that.'

He shrugs. 'I needed to figure out some things, work through some stuff,' he says casually, as if this 'stuff' wasn't his identity.

'So, you done that?' Buffy asks bluntly.

'No,' he admits. 'I haven't.'

'Maybe you should,' Buffy suggests. 'Travel some more. Figure out your stuff. Give Faith some space. She'll still be here when you come back.'

It's interesting, how much sense Buffy's making, and suddenly things seem clearer.

He smiles gratefully and leaves the next morning. Faith's still not home, and he wonders when he'll see her again.

'Thank you,' he says to Buffy, and he's not sure exactly what he's thanking her for, let alone if she knows what he's thanking her for, but she gives a little smile.

'No problem,' she says, shrugging slightly, and then quips, 'Buffy the Guidance Counsellor, at your service.' Then she turns serious and gives him a quick hug. 'Good luck,' she says. 'I hope you find what you're looking for.'

He doesn't tell her that he's not sure what he's looking for. Instead he smiles and walks away, off to destinations unknown.

--

He goes to Vienna. Don't ask him why, because it makes no sense geographically, but he's always wanted to go to Vienna. He spends three days there, and it's nice, but he stays at a crappy hostel where he's on the same floor as some Australian girls' choir and is eyeballed by their male chaperones anytime he goes anywhere near them. This is because the jerkish members of the Italian soccer team the floor below like hanging out by the staircase and making lewd comments any time one of the girls walks by, and he's under suspicion by default for being young and male.

The Italian guys, gross as they are, make him miss Rome, and he thinks with satisfaction that if those guys pulled stuff like that on Faith, she'd probably yank their balls off. These girls just kind of give them dirty looks and sidle by, except for a few who know Italian and thus can understand every word the guys are saying and reply back in kind.

He knows he needs something to do when his entertainment is a couple of Australian girls telling a bunch of chauvinistic Italians where to go, and what's completely insane is that he's in a whole different country he's never been to before with thousands of things to explore and he doesn't want to do any of them. Of course, he does explore, and he sees the Hapsburgs' palaces, and St Stephen's Cathedral and the Danube and the Opera House and Mozart's house and a thousand other things, but all he can think about is Rome and Faith, and godammit, he doesn't want to be thinking about Rome and Faith, because he's meant to be thinking about his memories and Angel and how the hell he's going to fit his life back together.

Still, he wonders how Faith is, what she's doing. How pissed off with him she is.

It's the end of July by now, and, as he's going to report in an e-mail home if he can ever get hold of a computer, it's hot. His sister made him promise to get a picture of the church from _The Sound of Music_, so he's in Salzburg now, and the hostel's a lot nicer this time, but amazingly, he's run into that Australian girls' choir again. At the moment, he's sitting in the lobby-slash-common room with about ten of them, watching _The Sound of Music _on TV and waiting for internet access. Judging by the novel-length e-mail one girl seems to be writing and the fact that the other girl seems to be checking her livejournal friends page, he could have a while to wait.

'I've never ever seen the end of this movie,' one of the girls – Lauren, he thinks – to his left muses.

He chuckles. 'Neither have I. My sister's tried to get me to watch it too many times to count but I always fall asleep.'

A girl to the right of him, whose name he knows is Emily, laughs. 'I always get distracted about halfway through,' she admits. 'I mean to go back to it but I never do. I've got the attention span of a goldfish.'

He thinks of Faith at that, because aside from slaying and sex, she could never keep her attention on one thing for more than ten minutes at best. 'I know someone like that,' he says, and wonders yet again what he's doing here when the only place he wants to be is Rome.

Emily grins, and she's about to say something else when a girl in front of them, Katie, says, 'Guys, we're going to sing "Doe a deer", okay?' and then the song starts, and they all start singing. It's pretty entertaining, but his mind is drifting.

It's a little later in the movie when the girls start talking to him again.

'So where are you going after this?' Lauren asks him.

He has to think about this for a second. 'I'm not sure,' he says honestly. 'I haven't really planned out what I'm doing.'

'Lucky you,' one of the others, Alysha, says. 'We're scheduled 247.'

'You travelling with anyone?' Emily asks.

'Nah,' he replies, sounding more casual and carefree than he really is. 'I'm flying solo.'

'Does that get lonely?' she asks curiously. 'I mean, this travelling thing's great, but I'm with fifty-five other people.'

He smiles wryly. 'Sometimes.'

If only she knew.

On the screen, the Von Trapp children are standing at the gate of the Abbey looking for Maria, and Connor feels like he is Maria, hiding away from everyone that matters in his quest to figure out who exactly he is.

The novel-length e-mail girl, whose name he doesn't know, plops down on a chair in front of him. She turns around to Emily. 'Em, it's your turn.'

'Cool,' Emily says, but she makes no indication of moving. Instead she turns to Connor. 'You want to use the computer?'

'Don't you want to?' he asks, though really, he's just being polite.

Emily shakes her head. 'Nah. I spoke to my mum this afternoon. Go ahead.'

He smiles at her. 'Thanks.'

She just grins. Feeling grateful, he makes his way to the front of the room and slots his money in. He smiles when he sees the amount of mail he's been sent, and doesn't feel quite as lonely when he realises how many people do care about him. His sister's sent a few, and there's one from his parents, and then there are messages from varied friends. There's even one from Buffy, and he thinks about all these people who've cared enough to send him a message and he wonders if it matters that these people love him because of a spell that made him into a new person.

Behind him, Katie yells, 'I'm Guy Sebastian!' and then launches, along with the movie, into "Climb Ev'ry Mountain". Connor has no clue who Guy Sebastian is, but these girls are like his sister, and the way she sings along to movies, like _The Sound of Music_ and _Moulin Rouge_. He thinks of her goofy expression and exaggerated warbling notes, and he can hardly believe that she hasn't always been his sister.

And that's the thing. Does that even matter? Does it matter that he's Connor Angel, Connor Reilly, first-class nutjob, favoured son and hard-working student, with a messed-up surrogate family and his four grandparents, two parents and his little sister, brought up in a hell dimension and suburban California?

Well, that's the six million dollar question, isn't it?

---

He travels. He muses. He checks out ruins. He remembers. He buys souvenirs. He even stakes a vamp or two.

After a while, he thinks that maybe he's found what he's looking for.

---

So now it's mid-August and he's back in Rome Fiumicino Airport. Right back where he started. And he knows what he wants to do.

He knocks on the door to Buffy's apartment, both dreading and hoping for Faith to answer the door. She does.

His heart is running a one hundred metre sprint as he says, 'Hi.'

'Hi,' she replies coolly, and Connor feels a sinking feeling in his stomach. He's trying to figure out what to say next, but Faith beats him to it.

'Three things,' she says, looking at him steadily. 'One. Don't tell me you love me. Two. Don't talk to B about me. Three. Kiss me, now.'

He gladly complies.

---

They emerge for food a couple of hours later. Faith's insistence, and he doesn't blame her; they're pretty good at exhausting each other.

Buffy's sitting at the kitchen table, doing some paperwork. 'Have a good sleep?' she asks teasingly, a sly grin playing about her lips.

Faith flips her off, and takes stock of the fridge. Connor sits at the table as Faith starts complaining about the lack of real food. Buffy gives him a smile, and they kind of share an understanding.

'Glad you're back, Connor,' she says.

He grins. 'So am I,' he says. And he is, because even though Faith's screwed up, and he's screwed up and they're in all probability going to screw up whatever they have going here, he's going to try anyway.

See, he's figured out some stuff. He's Connor, right? And all this stuff? The memories, Angel, his parents, his double-life: he wouldn't be Connor without them.

For that, he's grateful.

What Angel did made him so much better, and he's grateful for that too.

What he's most grateful for though, are the people who care about him. Because they don't care what he does, or what he remembers, they just love him.

He's still got issues. He still has nightmares. He's still a little screwed up, and he suspects that he always will be.

But somehow, he thinks he's going to be okay, and right now, that's all he needs.

---

_Little darling, I feel that ice is slowly melting_

_Little darling, it seems like years since it's been clear_

_Here comes the sun, here comes the sun_

_And I say it's all right _

---

end

Aaronlisa's requirements: Any genre, Connor/Faith pairing, no Cordelia, no NC-17, a relationship between Connor and Faith developing because of the exploration possibilities of their many issues, rather than them just being the traditional couple. Preferably post-season five.

Lyrics used at the end were taken from George Harrison's _Here Comes the Sun._


End file.
